McCain Continues Campaign Against Rice

If U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice thought she could stymie the Benghazi drumbeat by sitting down with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other top GOP senators in a closed-door session on Tuesday, she was sorely mistaken.

McCain took to Fox News on Tuesday afternoon to express his displeasure with Rice and the Obama administration’s response to the attacks on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, saying he would be “very hard-pressed” to support her as a potential replacement to Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

“Some of the answers were hard to understand and some of the information she had access to, clearly, they contradicted the statement that she made and, by the way, today, after all this time, she issued a statement and in that statement she said she had given false information to the wrong, to the American people about the obviously never took place,” McCain told Fox’s Neil Cavuto. “For example, she also said Al Qaeda was decimated. That is patently false. I asked why that statement should be made to the American people and she really had no good answer for it. There was lots of classified information that she gets briefed on that indicated this was not a hateful video that sparked a spontaneous demonstration. I still don’t understand why anyone would believe when you come with mortars and rocket propelled grenades how that could possibly be viewed as a spontaneous demonstration.”

After the meeting, Rice issued a statement saying she didn’t intend to mislead the public, faulting an initial intelligence assessment as the reason her comments after the attack were incorrect.

Watch more of McCain’s appearance below:

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Igor Bobic is the assistant editor of Talking Points Memo, helping oversee the site’s coverage of politics and policy in Washington. While originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Igor feels best at home on the beaches of Southern California. He can be reached at igor@talkingpointsmemo.com.